1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to calculators and more specifically to a recipe calculator designed for calculating food ingredient ratios and presenting the ingredient amounts in their most convenient form.
2. Background Art
A common problem in cooking, whether cooking for one person or many people, is the conversion of the ingredient amounts of a given recipe to the necessary amounts for a different serving size. A typical example might be a certain recipe originally designed to produce six servings while only two servings are needed. The recipe calls for two-thirds of a cup of a specific ingredient. Dividing two-thirds of a cup by three results in two-ninths of a cup of the ingredient. Most kitchens are not equipped to handle an odd sized measurement such as two-ninths of a cup. Therefore, the cook has to convert two-ninths of a cup to the corresponding number of tablespoons and/or teaspoons. This task is so burdensome that many a cook opt for the easiest possible serving size reduction which in this case would result in three servings instead of the desired two servings. In fact, a large number of people when faced with simply doubling a recipe, will separately mix up two complete batches of the recipe and then combine them for cooking.
As in virtually every other aspect of homemaking, electronics technology has filtered into the culinary art in the form of cooking control systems. Two such electronic control devices are taught by LONGABAUGH, U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,949 and WONG, U.S. Pat. No. 4,649,810. LONGABAUGH teaches a method and apparatus for controlling cooking cycles in an apparatus, such as a deep fat fryer, which provides the capability of lengthening or shortening or changing the ending temperature of a cooking cycle without changing the overall cycle. WONG teaches an automatic cooking apparatus wherein a microcomputer controlled apparatus automatically prepares a specific dish by introducing the ingredients at their specified times and controlling the necessary temperatures. Neither of the devices however, teach an apparatus for calculating ingredient ratios and measuring unit conversions.
What is needed is an apparatus capable of converting a recipe of a given serving size to a proportionate recipe of reduced or increased serving size by providing the new ingredients in their most convenient size units, and further an apparatus which is easy to use and requires no special training.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a recipe calculator which is capable of converting a recipe of given serving size to a recipe of alternate serving size by providing the necessary ingredient amounts in their most convenient size units. A secondary object of this invention is to provide an alternate display mode which provides the proper ingredient amount in an alternate size unit. A further object of this invention is to provide a recipe calculator which is easy to use, requiring no special training, and has self-evident built-in function keys which facilitate single key stroke results.